Road pricing is increasingly being implemented around the world to combat congestion, curb carbon and other polluting emissions, compensate for falling revenues from fuel duty, improve the efficiency of the existing transport infrastructure, and fund new transport projects. Road Pricing outlines some of the economic theory behind these schemes, indicates the different kinds of road charging schemes that are possible, describes the electronic technology being used, shows that it is available and already in operational use in many countries, addresses how public acceptability can be achieved, and demonstrates that people will accept road pricing if they understand the reasons for using it, and above all, if they have experienced it in use and understand how it will affect them personally. There are very few engineering-oriented books in this field, or books aimed at transport planners. This book aims to fill that gap - informing engineers and planners how to prepare for and implement road pricing schemes, which technologies to use, and which technologies are already in use successfully throughout the world. The book also aims to show politicians and policy advisors what has been successfully achieved and what is possible now and in the immediate future.

The emphasis of the chapter is on electronic systems, not cash or paper-based schemes, often described as multi-lane free-flow - there are no toll barriers, and no need for vehicles to stop in order to pay; stopping is undesirable since it results in congestion, pollution and accidents.

It is now more than 50 years since the publication of the UK Smeed Report, a seminal work that first proposed road pricing as practical policy for dealing with congested roads. This chapter is a review of what has happened since and what road pricing has to offer in the future. Although much of the material is UK-centric, the lessons apply world-wide.

Different types of road pricing schemes (point, cordon, area, distance) will be addressed, including how we pay at the moment, how technology might enable different types of payment, examples of different types of payment and how we might pay differently to use roads in the future. The chapter will also introduce the technologies used in road pricing. It is an update of an Intelligent Transport Systems (UK) White Paper. New approaches to measuring the cost and performance of road user charging schemes will also be covered. We aim to address many of the misconceptions that arise from comparing the operating cost and performance amongst schemes that have different policy objectives and operating characteristics.

For communities struggling to implement congestion pricing, the Minnesota, London and Stockholm case studies provide hope, and a number of lessons to potentially inform their outreach and education efforts. Perhaps, the most powerful of all these lessons is that citizens are much more likely to embrace pricing after they have a chance to actually observe it, whether it be by touring a facility in another area, viewing a well-crafted video or other type of visual, or seeing a pilot project that is implemented in their community. For transportation and political leaders, this lesson has important implications. For instance, it suggests that if they take a political risk and implement an effective and efficient HOT lane project on a demonstration basis, they can have confidence that public skepticism likely will dissipate after residents can see and experience a well-implemented HOT lane in operation. .

Road pricing as a means to manage traffic in Singapore has a long history, starting with a manual system in 1975 and then replaced with a DSRC-based road pricing system that offered improved convenience to motorists and improved effectiveness for the authority. This will be improved further when the GNSS-based road pricing system comes into operation from 2020 onwards and will double up to provide other value-added services such as the monitoring of traffic conditions and disseminating such traffic conditions to drivers on the roads to make the road network operate more effectively. While road pricing has been effective in Singapore for managing traffic, this approach to be adopted elsewhere has to be customized to suit the nature of the urban city as well as the culture and acceptance of the people.

This chapter has explored the challenges faced by GM in decision-making around its plans for a package of measures that would include congestion charging and public transport investment. It has shed light on some of the ways in which party politics, local campaigning and the media contributed to shaping public opinion. In looking at related developments in GM following the vote, it has shown that whilst some of the intentions of the proposals have been realised as part of subsequent policy initiatives there remains a reluctance to pursue the charging element. As someone who supported the GMTIF proposals, seeing their value for the conurbation in social, economic and environmental terms and recognising the central role of the congestion charge within them, I note that there is still a need for greater investment in public transport and active travel and to recognise that moving towards these more sustainable modes requires sticks as well as carrots. Whilst bold action on GM's car-centred transport networks would therefore be welcome, it must be recognised that the referendum result makes that more challenging politically than it would otherwise be - though it is of course not impossible. Whilst the use of a referendum might enable politicians to defer to the `will of the people', the challenges of meaningfully addressing the congestion in our cities and moving towards sustainable mobility remain.

The case studies highlight the variety of social, political and environmental contexts within which behaviour change programmes were planned and implemented. From this, the type of consultation process will need to reflect the cultural background of the region in which the package or scheme is to be delivered. In common though, all the international case studies highlight how consultation (and related communications) is woven into the policy development process, split into `internal' (to define and refine possible policies) and `external' (to shortlist and refine a single policy) within an integrated transport package. In some cases, these well-founded processes failed to create a critical mass of support. Therefore, as the examples demonstrate, stakeholder engagement is a necessary but not sufficient prerequisite for political and public acceptance.

Road pricing systems, their subsystems and components use national and international standards in various areas, like telecommunications, mechanical, payment systems, safety, construction and many others. They all serve specific needs for specific areas. The aim of this chapter is to introduce the framework of standards that have been developed explicitly and primarily for use in road pricing systems. These are standards for the field of Electronic Fee Collection (EFC).

The REETS project has undoubtedly been a success through bringing together a core group of toll chargers and potential EETS providers to resolve some of the commercial and technical questions which were leading to uncertainty. The project reached a broad consensus between toll chargers on how to proceed on the main topics where potential EETS providers needed clarification in order to make service introduction more viable from a commercial perspective.

This chapter has shown that ANPR is a viable and valuable technology both as a primary means of charging, and as a tool to aid enforcement and compliance. It is also clear however that ANPR has, and will always have, some limitations in usability and performance, and these need to be taken into account when incorporating ANPR into a road charging system implementation. While performance limitations may to some extent be mitigated by advancements in technology and processing algorithms, other limitations around the nature of registration plates need legal measures.

The lack of national standards in the United States has been the primary obstacle not only in slowing interoperability but also in the advancement of mobile payment and ITS systems. Effectively, we had 50 individual countries protecting their investments in the technology and unique business rules that they deployed years prior. Tolling in the United States grew up with every individual deployment believing that the concepts of their agency, state or region were better than anyone else's. In the early years, most agencies did not consider the need for cooperation between their agency and agencies or states beyond their confined regions. With the continued vision of those working on interoperability, this issue will be solved prior to the implementation of autonomous vehicles. This will bring mobile payments not only to tolling but also to commercial applications such as parking and fast food, not just in the United States but worldwide.

National Road Pricing is technically feasible. If we started with just the motorway network where over 20% [15] of total vehicle miles are driven, it has been estimated that there are approximately 800 motorway intersections and junctions. This could require of the order of 1,600-2,000 camera sites, depending on where they are located and the configuration of slip roads, to measure distance driven and detect entry and exit location. This is only ten times the scale of the London scheme in terms of vehicle detection sites. Regarding customer payment channels, there is now much greater take up of digital channels than in 2003, so payment facilities for the occasional user as well as regular users should be much easier to implement at lower unit cost per transaction. Given the better quality of DVLA's registration data and greater opportunity to have account based payment, it should also be easier to accurately bill UK drivers for their usage and enforce against non-payers. We conclude that a national scheme is eminently feasible for the United Kingdom.

The charging systems in Sweden show that congestion charges can be an efficient (socio-economically beneficial) and effective policy measure for combating urban congestion. Furthermore, the technology of the Swedish charging systems has proven to work well, with high accuracy of correctly identified vehicles using the video technique with ANPR. The case of Gothenburg demonstrates this measure is not only less efficient if initial congestion levels are low, but also less efficient in the long run: the effects are declining in the long run. In Stockholm, the effects have increased over the years. The difference between the cities in this respect could be a result of the lower density city structure and high car dependence in Gothenburg. From this perspective, congestion charges are likely most successful in cities where congestion levels are high and where there exist good alternatives to driving.

The tendency today is clear: to move from traditional single-lane, barrier controlled toll collection systems to multi-lane free-flow tolling (Open Road Tolling, ORT). The consequences of this transition are substantial: better and more efficient solutions in terms of increased traffic throughput, reduced number of traffic incidents and fewer disturbances to the customers. Another important advantage is the fact that ORT will significantly contribute to reduced pollution and fuel wastage from vehicles queueing at toll booths. However, certain issues and design features need careful attention and discussions in the early design stages in order to enable the full potentials of the ORT concept without creating negative impacts that could potentially overshadow the benefits.

In summary, the future for GNSS tolling looks brighter than ever. For the technology vendors in this domain, it has been extremely demanding to survive in this challenging market - with only a few GNSS-based tolling schemes being installed over the past decade, and many failed projects in between. But many new opportunities lie ahead, and we can look forward to navigate these new paths, with the guidance of increasingly more accurate and cost-effective satellite-based equipment.

The HU-GO system brought a completely new view of the “Tolling World”with its innovative and unique technological solutions, with the open GNSS-based tolling platform. The HU-GO solution utilizes the already applied GPS positioning technology, providing a solid basis for other ITS and electronic payment solutions for a relatively low price. The Hungarian government spent years evaluating the opportunities to develop the road tolling infrastructure in Hungary; the conclusion was that only a free-flow GNSS tolling system would be flexible enough to support the local tolling requirements. The limited timescale forced the creative development of existing GNSS system solutions. With these innovative and cost-effective developments, the HU-GO system created a new chapter in road tolling history.

Now known are the technologies, systems and many of the appropriate policies for adopting and implementing a fully functioning, operational distance charge system for light vehicles in the United States, alongside emergence of a supporting commercial market. As this article notes, many US states are headed in this direction especially in the western part of the nation. The new US federal grant program greatly assists the states in these investigations. The next steps toward a distance charge mandate in the United States are, in essence, political. As the general public and policy makers in the United States gain more intimate knowledge of distance charge models, political support should improve (provided the public continues to accept the longstanding user pays policy for road funding). If during this process, discovery of additional helpful technological, systemic or policy measures occurs, states will adopt them and further improve the chances for adoption of a mandate for distance charging in the near term. Widespread, mandated distance charging in the United States is not that far away.

The city of Milan had introduced a form of cordon pricing to enter the city centre already in 2008. Originally, it was conceived as a pollution charge, aimed at reducing the polluting vehicles going into the most delicate area of the city, and only secondarily affecting the traffic volumes. That policy, whose effects declined over the years due to the fleet turnover, was substituted in 2012 with a genuine congestion charge, called `Area C'. The substitution came after a city referendum in June 2011. The chapter discusses the history of the policy and summarises the main outcomes, 5 years after implementation, in terms of traffic reduction, emissions and impact on user groups. A section is devoted to the description of the technology used and of the architecture of the system, entailing real time data exchange with the vehicle registry, the urban police and a number of payment systems. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the motivations behind the (unexpected) public and political acceptability of the policy and proposes some hints to transfer its experience to other cases.

Both road pricing and rush-hour avoidance projects have the potential to be successful congestion reduction strategies. Making use of economic incentives can be a fruitful behavioural intervention approach to change existing travel routines of frequent car users. The financial rewarding and charging schemes provide a persuasive external impetus that makes travellers rethink their existing habits. They provide the necessary window of opportunity for travellers to alter existing behavioural routines and make them change their car use during peak hours.

The chapter states that the road traffic schemes will not remove congestion on a sustainable basis, if implemented independently of other measures. The third and fourth certainly have their benefits, though the jury is still out on the impact of autonomous vehicles, but none of them are a complete solution. So the real issue is how to achieve the public (and hence political) acceptability of road pricing and create conditions that are favourable for its implementation.